Honest Conversation Is Overrated
Actual Human Interactions Witnessed Or Overheard
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
My mistake, today, was in opening early. It's ten minutes before I'm even supposed to be giving the stink eye to the heroin addicts when a guy comes in with one of our plastic bags, throws it on the counter and says "How much for these?"
I am in Qughincy, so I can barely muster an eye roll. "What are they?" "A bunch of old comics I found in my attic. They were my dad's. He says they're worth fifty bucks." I open the bag, a little suspicious that his dad has one of our plastic bags up in his attic. Sure enough, the comics he has found in his dad's attic include such antique titles as Brightest Day #4, The Return Of Bruce Wayne #3, and Batman #700, which came out back in the dark ages of June 9th, 2010. "I think your dad is playing a practical joke on you. These comics are about two weeks old. We already have plenty of these items in stock, and no interest in buying more." "That other guy who works here. The chink. He usually buys my stuff. It's valuable." Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we're done. "You're welcome to come back when he's working. His name's Tom, by the way. I'm not buying these from you." And I walk over to the children's section to straighten out the books. While I'm doing that, he meanders over to the dollar section, and starts picking up books at random. "Hey, buddy. How come these books ain't got no ratings on them?" I am not getting roped in to this conversation. "Because they don't." "They safe for kids? I got a nephew." "Depends on the age, and the kid. Some of them are violent, some of them may have strong language and adult themes." He giggles when I say adult. "So they nudie books?" Eyeroll. "No. None of them have any nudity." "Titties?" "No." "Because I got a Superman book here once where Lois Lane puts a dildo in Superman's butt." "Well," I say. "I tell you what. You go home right now, get me the DC comic of Lois Lane putting a dildo in Superman's butt, and I'll give you five thousand dollars." The guy stares at me. "Really?" "Yea. The dildo issue is one of the rarest comics in the industry. So you should go home RIGHT NOW and get it." "Five thousand bucks?" I walk toward him. "Six thousand if it's in mint condition. But you have to get it now, I'm being relieved in an hour, and the other guy will probably try and rip you off." "I don't know where it is." "Well go find it. It's worth FIVE THOUSAND dollars. Isn't that worth going through some drawers? An attic?"
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The realization that Elvis was a flat-assed liar didn't ruin my life, or lower my respect for him. I had none. He was just some guy with no ass, bad teeth, and a horrible dye job who had invaded my life to escape...well, I have no idea what he was escaping because he never told me the truth. Finding out he was a lying liar didn't take away from all the happy times we'd shared together. We had no happy times.
Things were different with Sora. If you read The Insafemode Journals before they were deleted by a Russian hacker, you may remember that Sora and I had lots of happy times. I wrote frequently about the happy things we shared. Easter with Cheerio, Ben, Celeste, and Sir Trick; antagonizing Ben at a house party. There were other times, I know there were. But they disappeared in a whiff of internet hackery. I didn't write about the lying, because unlike Elvis, I actually love Sora. But our entire relationship was built around a lie. And, no, not the epic He Never Loved Me lie. Though, yes, that, too. The first lie was an innocent one. We met at one of my shows, I invited him to another competition. He told me he would come up to Boston, we could hang out, we'd go to my show, and then he was going to stay with one of his friends. And then, totally weird, right, his friend never called him back, so he needed a place to stay, and came home with me. Of course there was no friend. Two weeks later, he was supposed to meet me and Celeste around noon to go to one of Celeste's shows. At 1:30, Celeste was long gone, and I was thinking I had maybe overjudged our relationship, when he called to apologize for being late, that he was almost to my house. So I walked down in the direction of the T to meet him. I was halfway down the hill when he bounded up, a white rose in his hand. And the kiss. And the kiss. And the wow, okay, kiss. And a white rose. No one I had ever dated had ever given me any sort of flora. And no guy since. Back at the house, Sir Trick was watching MXC. "Hey guys." He said, flashing a rare smile. He hadn't been smiling at me, partially because he wasn't a full time smiler, and partially because Ben, who I wasn't talking too very often, had borrowed one of his DVDs, and had now had it for several months. And I, being an associate of Ben's, was guilty of overborrowing by association. But, at that very second, Sora had committed no wrong, and was, thereby, smileworthy. "What happened? Thought you were going to be here at noon." "Oh." Sora said. "I forgot to take my medication, and I passed out on the train, they had to stop it and call an ambulance." Which was news to me. "You passed out?" "Yea, it was no big deal." "What condition do you have?" Sir Trick asked. "Oh, I don't know." Because, of course, he had no condition. He was not on medication for a condition that he didn't know about. He did not pass out on the train. He missed a train, because he was completely unreliable. He would miss train after train in the coming months. He would get caught in traffic that didn't exist. I would lose entire days waiting for him because I loved him and knew he was lying and didn't care because I loved him and. There were many, many little lies littered throughout the happy times. But there were happy times, so why focus on tiny, little harmless lies? In August 2007, after four months of knowing each other, and three months of dating and living together, I went to Austin for a national poetry slam competition. On my second day in Austin, I got a call from my friend Don, who happened to also be Sora's boss at The Truffle Shuffle chocolate store. "Hey, Adam, tell your boyfriend he's late for work." "Ugh. Really? Sorry, Don, but I'm in Austin, so I can't exactly dump him off the couch or wherever he fell asleep. I"ll call Celeste, though, and see if she can wake him up." Well, Celeste said he wasn't home. I told her to call me when she saw him. I told Don to have Sora call me when he got to work. I called Sora's cell a few times. No one called me back that day. The next morning I got a call from Sora that his dad had a heart attack, and he had to spend some time helping take care of the house, and he didn't know how long it would be for, but probably not too long, and he missed me, and was really sorry, but "Don't be mad. It's an emergency." What were the odds of me dating another compulsive liar with a supposedly dead parent who would leave me by telling me a close family member was ill and he had to take care of them? Apparently, pretty good. Everything splinters over a time. Sometimes it's a gradual shaving, and sometimes an explosion. Whether beautiful or troubling usually depends on where the splinters land. A kaleidoscope of colored wood on the floor being much preferable to a single blade of tarnish lodged in the plantar.
When I was living with Celeste, Sora, and Sir Trick in Mission Hill, our front door was the only door in the house that wasn't splintering. It was solid and brown, while the rest of the doors flaked paint on the floor, and wore at the hinges. Divine moved in in September. And the other doors continued their slow wither, and the front door continued to be, well, a door. In December, Sora let me know that he was going to be in town, and he wanted to talk. And the talk was uneventful, and uninformative. He was, as always, late. I was, as always, forgiving. I bought the meal, and we parted company when he realized he was half an hour late for meeting some of his other friends. I traveled home without incident. Opened the door to the house, which was never locked, got into the tiny lobby, and the door...the door to my apartment, solid, brown, sturdy, had been thoroughly decimated. The hinges were ripped from the wall. Huge chunks of splintered wood lay in ideograms on the floor. Each one reading something to the effect of "theft", "loss of trust", and "holy shit". I plodded to my room, because the house was empty, and what good would running do? Everything appeared to be in order. Nothing ruffled through, nothing missing. I went into Divine's room. Everything appeared to be in order. Nothing missing in the kitchen, the empty bedroom (though they could have easily taken nothing from nothing and I wouldn't have known), the bathroom, or the pantry. I called Divine who asked me, right away, if there was a Raspberry Records bag on top her TV. There was not. "Oh no!" (S)He said. "That's where I'd put the rent you gave me." (S)He stole my money and broke down our door to make it look like a theft. (S)He then used my money to pay the rent to the Landlord and make me look like a rube for not having it. I wasn't sure of it at the time, but after another four monthe of h(im)(er) not paying any bills, my trust was was splintered into ideograms which read "(S)He is a fucken thief who would concoct any story necessary to keep h(er)(is) drug habit going." A year and a half later, I'm sitting on a couch in a different apartment with Bacchus, surrounded by my roommates, watching The Roast Of Bob Saget when someone starts pounding at the door. I imagine it exploding inwards, so I rush to it, and open the door, and...and it's Asterisk. He's tanked, as per usual, "What's up motherfuckers? I was coming down the street and saw your lights on and OH MY GOD, IS THAT CLORIS LEACHMAN?" It was. And Asterisk gracefully stumbled over to the couch (he's had a lot of practice stumbling, he's very good at it), and sat to my left. A befuddled Bacchus sat on my right, leaning into me whenever Cloris said something hilarious. And every time she said something scathing, Asterisk dug into my left leg with his right hand. And so it was that her humor was bruised into me for days. Asterisk left at the end of the roast, and Bacchus and I surrendered to my room. "Asterisk was very..." "...drunk?" I offered. "touchy with you." While he was, surprisingly, hands on "There wasn't anything romantic or sexual about it. Asterisk and I have never been and will never be anything more than friends." "Ok." And I reached my arms around him and "Not tonight." He said. And this is where my memory splinters. I remembered the restaurant correctly. A Japanese place with excellent soup. I remembered him seeming more awkward about halfway through the meal. I remembered a guy sitting at another table recognizing him, walking over to our table and saying he was surprised to see him there. "I thought you only came here to break up with people. " Then turning to me, and saying, " I'm sorry, I hope you two aren't here on a date." And I saw any future we had, tearing at the hinges. What I remember is him growing distant. I remember him saying he wasn't all that interested in me as anything more than a friend, and me saying "I already have friends." or something snarky that devalued our relationship for no good reason other than I wanted to hurt back. But, after a few months of not seeing him, I ran into him in Cambridge, and he invited me back to his apartment to watch The Bourne Supremacy (which wasn't about Cape Cod at all), and when it was over, and he invited me to stay over, I asked why he hadn't wanted more out of her relationship. And he tried to give me a funny look, but failed. He only looked hurt. "You broke up with me." He said. I didn't want to argue, so we talked about other people we were seeing, and I stayed the night, but nothing happened. Back at my new home in Brighton, I checked my old e-mail and instant messanger conversations, and sure enough, I'd asked him if we were going to continue just fooling around, or whether we had a future as a couple. And he had said he needed some time to think about it. And I'd told him that wasn't good enough. It should have been good enough. If Clint Eastwood movies have taught me anything it's that power corrupts. Say you own property. Say you own a lot of property that you, maybe don't like to to do anything with. You're too important to fix your tenants' appliances, or return their calls. Shit, you own property damnit. Thirtysomething buildings worth.
When a tenant calls to let you know that a city worker has, in the course of repairing the road out front, accidentally severed the power cable to your building, you don't have to answer the phone. You own property. But when the tenants give your phone number to the cops and the electric company, well, you figure you'd best get there before they get one of their fancy tools to break into the basement on their own. And aren't you a great person for finally doing your job? Now, you've always known your tenants have no power. When the winter was its coldest, and a fuse blew in the basement, and the tenants called because they had no heat, and no electricity on one half of the apartment, you sit back in your nice, heated, house with your trophy cunt, and drink, and bask in the knowledge that you own property. Oh, sure, you could hire someone to manage your properties for you, and they could solve your tenants' problems, but, the thing is, you're a lying shitbag, so you have problems trusting other people because you assume that they, too, are lying shitbags. So you wait three days until it's convenient for you to drop by and flip the breaker in the basement that you refuse to give the tenants keys to. What are they going to do? Complain? You own property. But now the city is calling you, and the electric company, and there are police involved, and not because of your tenants but because the city made a mistake, and they are trying their damndest to fix it. So you show up in a reasonable amount of time, and you chitchat and exchange pleasantries with the working class people and your tenants. You are a little impatient because your trophycunt is in the car, and she's angry because the little people and the law are intruding on her baby eating time, or whatever it is she does when she molts her trophy skin and lets her true demon form out. You don't have time to remember everything your trophycunt does, you're too busy owning property. But the city and the electric company are taking too long, and you're too important to stick around. And when a tenant offers to lock up the basement as soon as you leave, you decide that isn't good enough, so you lock up the basement and leave. Here's the problem: in an effort to be kind to the tenants, the city placed a generator next to the building to supply them with electricity, and the city doesn't want to lose the generator, so they've parked people next to it to make sure the generator isn't stolen, vandalized, or whatever it is people to do with massive generators. The generator is turned on around three pm, and will be kept on until the power can be connected. And, hey, at eight o'clock, they city and the electric company are ready to turn on the power, cut the generator, and go about their merry way. But you're so busy owning property and being important that you don't feel it necessary to let them into the basement. So the generator, the city employees, and the electricians sit on the street collecting overtime. How bad would your luck have to be for the deputy mayor to show up on his motorcycle at 1AM and start asking why the project that should have been finished at 8pm is still going on? Pretty bad? What if he's there and discovers that the neighbors, not your tenants, but the neighbors have been complaining about the noise? What if he's there and discovers your illegal advertising for one of your many side businesses posted on the front of your non-commercial, residential building? What if he's so pissed that you've refused the city and the electric company entrance, that he decides that first thing in the morning all of your important property is going to be inspected by the city, the fire, and the water departments? Is karma that much of a cunt? Oh, yes. Oh, yes it is. Tomorrow morning, you'll realize that you have to reimburse the city for the overtime the city employees worked. And you'll be fined for refusing entrance. And the inspectors will probably hear a lot of complaints from the tenants about you not ever fixing anything, or returning phone calls. You know, those things that property owners are supposed to do. In short, you will have a miserable fucken day. And I will be laughing very very hard. I think no one has called me out for the way I've been overusing cunt lately, because they understand why it's such a foul word for me. I give it the same vitriol that lesbians give ballsack, and bisexuals use dignity. Just one of those things that has no use in our daily lives. I mean, I haven't seen a cunt up close (not counting my landlady) in a number of years now. And while that number isn't nearly as large as I would like, it is greater than two, which is a start.
I try and only use the word in the company of people who will understand me, or on The Internet, which is just a bastion of tolerance. I understand why some people don't like it. I don't like when people use the word retard as an insult when they mean stupid. I don't mind if they use retarded to describe someone who is slow moving due to a weight dragging behind them, or someone who will be late for work because construction retarded their progress, but stupid people are just stupid. And cunts are cunts. This week I am calling her a cunt because she called me while I was in the pharmacy across the street. She had blocked her number, and had I not been expecting a call from someone whose number I didn't know, I wouldn't have answered the phone at all. But I did. "Safey, this is Cunt. Do you know what the date is today?" "Excuse me?" To be fair, I probably sounded a bit rude, but I know a lot of Cunts, and I was not expecting any of them to use me as a phone-activated calendar. "Do. You. Know. What. Date it is?" "The...tenth, I think. Which Cunt is this?" "Safey, if it's the tenth, why don't I have your check?" "I put a check in the box on the first." Late the night of the first, but they never check it until the second or third, anyway. "We don't have it." And, here, perhaps, I should have been diplomatic, and said I'd look into it. But, here's the deal: for the last four months, she has told me that she hasn't received my check. And each of these prior months, it's turned out to be another of the roommates' checks that she hasn't received. She has been wrong four consecutive times. In fact, the only time I have ever been late with a check was the first month when I had my mother send a check to her. Unfortunately, Cunt isn't Cunt's real name. It's an alias. She probably pissed off the wrong sort of people before she married into money, and she has therefore changed her first and last names. I don't mean she changed her last name to her husband's, I mean she changed it to the name of the fancy car she hopes to one day own and use to run over small children and poor, elderly people. So, since her fake name isn't on the mailbox, the check was returned to my mother. Eventually. First, the tenants upstairs held onto it for a while. At any rate, rather than taking the diplomatic route, I said "Are you sure it's my check this time? You keep telling me you haven't received my check, and it ends up either 1.) your husband has it, or 2.) you have mine, and are missing another roommate's." "You should know whether or not you wrote me a check." She said, which I did know, and which I hadn't given any impression of not knowing. "I DID write you a check, and left it in the box. Are you sure you didn't lose it again?" A couple of months ago she'd lost two of my roommates' checks (they were in the same envelope), causing mass chaos when she told the two roommates whose checks she'd already cashed (mine, included) that she didn't have our money. At this point, I was nearly back at the house. Hoping that she and her husband would be in the driveway, so I could talk to them face to face. They were not. "Hold on." She said. "I'm not dealing with this retard." I thought she had put the phone down after the hold on and was addressing someone in whatever circle of hell she was currently being flogged in. I was wrong. "Hi. This is Cunt's Husband." Cunt's husband said. She had called me a retard. While I was within earshot. Deliberately while I was in earshot. And now she was going to try and Good Cop me with her doormat husband? "Look." I said. And before I could really vent my anger, he interrupted. "I'm going to check and see which check we're missing when we get home, but I think it's yours." "Well...I'll go check, myself. Either way, I'm going to write you a new check. If you find the old one, cash them both, and I won't write you a check for July, because I'm tired of your lousy bookkeeping." "I'm sorry." He said. It's a phrase I imagine he mutters in his sleep. Especially when Cunt saws off and re-attaches his head with her teeth. "You should check with your roommates, and see if one of them hasn't paid us yet. I know we're missing one check, and I think it's yours." I entered the house, where Byrne was sitting on the couch. My bad mood was very apparent. "One of my roommates is home, the others should be back in a couple of hours, I'll check, and call you back." And I hung up the phone. According to my electronic bank records, it was my check that hadn't been cashed. So I called back Cunt's phone. She answered. "Give me your husband." I said. She handed the phone to him. "Hello?" "Yea, I checked my bank statement. You haven't cashed my check. But I definitely put it in the box on the first, before one of my other roommates, whose check you've already cashed." "Could you write another one and leave it in the box? The one out front." And here, I refrained from saying, Oh, you mean the one I've been using every month since last October? "Yea, I called the place the other day." FULL OF SHIT! FULL OF SHIT! "And they finally got the part in. I don't know how long before we get it." Probably the day we move out. "I'm thinking of calling the Better Business Bureau." "Me, too." I said. "It's been five months. Also, I don't appreciate being called a retard by your wife." Silence. "Yea, okay. So, the money will be in the box tomorrow?" "Tomorrow night, probably. Or Thursday. I've got a busy week." It was the first of two days off for me. "Ok. Well, thanks." And, as I hung up the phone, I said "What a cunt." Hoping he hadn't hung up yet, or, better yet, had handed the phone back to his wife. See, when I'm calling someone a cunt, I'm using it as an insult the way a chipmunk might use the name teeth when he's annoyed by an obnoxious beaver. Sure, a lot of people have teeth, but beavers are just so...teethy about their teeth ownership. And this is what my cunt landlady is like, picking up the phone with her gigantic vagina, and using it to queef the word retard at anyone who doesn't bow in awe at her enormous, enormous cunt. Instead, opting for "Sure. And while I have you on the phone, when are you going to fix our washing machine. It's June." Our washing machine having been broken since February. I am not having a very good day. I am on the outer edges of sick, which means I'm not coughing as much or as heavily, but I'm still not overly well. Unable to sleep, I headed to Allston to run some errands. I vaguely remembered getting slightly frustrated at work yesterday, and rearranging the racks so that they were alphabetical, as opposed to "in complete chaos". I also remembered leaving a note that may have sounded meaner than I intended, so I stopped in at the store, just before it opened and talked with my coworker. All was peace and blah.
Since she had to run some errands, I stayed and watched the store for a couple of hours. What I wanted to do when I left, was put on my headphones and listen to relaxing music on my way home, but there's been something wrong with my Zune for the past couple of weeks. I've been too busy to find out exactly what. It runs fine. The computer software runs fine, but the computer stopped being able to recognize the device. I figured there was something wrong with the cable, so I went to Best Buy to buy a new cable. Which, of course, is not sold on its own, but in a pack of adapters, for a total of $40. I bought the package. I decided to take the bus home, instead of the T, because there's a stop just in front of my house. But. Of course, but. There has been construction in front of our house for several weeks, possibly months at this point. Recently, the construction ebbed away from our house, and down the block. Today, it's flowed back. So the bus had to take a detour, which even the driver seemed surprised by. Fine, it's a nice day for a walk. Well, as it turns out, the new cable doesn't help things. So I call the Zune people, and the very nice lady at customer service runs me through the same list I went through myself when I checked their support webpage. Everything appears to be in working order. Which means I have to wait for them to send me a box to put the device in to mail to them to have them repair and mail back. Which will take an undisclosed amount of time. I also got some annoying family phone calls, nothing awful, but little stresses that I will try and help remedy. So I got off the phone, and decided to take a relaxing hot shower. I joked to myself that the hot water wouldn't be working. That would be funny, and annoying at the same time. But the water was perfect. I stepped in, pre-rinsed, put some shampoo in my hair and...TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP on the bathroom window. The fuck? TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP. I turned off the water, put on my towel and went to the window. A slightly heavyset guy in a suit and tie, surrounded by four college girls are on the other side of the window. "The keys don't work!" I shook my head. Nope, they were still there. I threw on my pants and t-shirt and went to the side door. I am pretty much too angry to even type what transpired. The guy was very nice. We were very pleasant to each other. The bottom line being: the landlady is a psycho. I have the day off tomorrow, and I'm going to see a lawyer about what my rights are, and whether I can withhold rent or sue her for any of her actions, something I never had to do with the previous landlady, because she was just crazy, not a negligent, greedy, lying sociopath. I want to make her life as difficult as she seems to want to make mine, and my roommates'. I love being home, sick, and listening to the landlady out and out lie to prospective tenants.
"It comes with a completely functional dishwasher and disposal" that we never bothered to install, so they're really just here for decoration. "There's a washer and dryer" that have been broken for a month, that we've refused to fix because we are entirely too busy. "I'm pretty sure heat and electricity are included in the rent." What? No. We've been paying those bills ourselves. Oh, dear. So, a prospective tenant just asked me some direct questions about the apartment, and I appear to have, very nicely, contradicted what she said. I did not, however, say anything negative about them. Which, I think, shows that I'm growing as a person. All I said was "I apologize for the dishes in the sink. My roommates are kind of messy, and the dishwasher hasn't worked since before we moved in. And, for the pile of laundry, but the washing machine broke a month ago, and they haven't got around to fixing it yet." "Are the landlords nice people?" Hold back. Hold back. Don't say anything awful. Don't tell the truth. "I think so. I've had limited interaction with them." was as diplomatic as I could be. "Would the place be cleaned thoroughly before we moved in?" "God, I hope so, for your sake. I know my room will be taken care of." "What about the furniture?" "Excuse me?" "Would the couch be cleaned and such?" "Uhhh, this is our furniture. The apartment comes unfurnished. I mean, the refrigerator, the non-working dishwasher, the non-working washer, and the dryer were here when we moved in, but everything else is ours." "Oh. I thought the ad said it came furnished." Gnashing of teeth, cracking of knuckles. "You must be thinking of another apartment." While editing an entry for bad_sex, I was waiting for a guy. I can't say not just any guy for he was just any guy. We'd e-mailed back and forth a bit. A 32 year old guy, fairly tall, black hair, practiced gay bottomer just wanted to come over and get fucked all night long. Sweet, right?
Apparently, where he's from, night is roughly four and half minutes long. Maybe it's my fault, I transposed the first two numbers of my address, so he wandered around lost for a bit (luckily there is no house with the transposed numbers, and he was at least smart enough to realize that I don't live at a Dunkin' Donuts). When he finally found the house, he knocked. I answered the door. And a not quite so tall, not as dark haired as in the picture he sent, not as young as in the picture he sent, guy was there. At least forty. And under careful scrutiny after he left the house, it can be determined that he didn't send a really old picture of himself, he sent a picture of someone who marginally looked like him. It's a very small picture. Maybe 75x75 pixels. I should have known. He'd also included a picture of his ass, probably figuring that no one would be able to tell the differences between asses based on a 75x75 pixel picture, as long as the skin tone was accurate and the shape roughly the same. Well, he didn't know he was meeting an ass connoisseur. When cops have Closed Circuit footage of drive by moonings, they call me in and have me investigate the subjects (and, if they're guilty, I get to investigate more liberally). The pic was not his ass. I still stuck my dick in it. Condomed, naturally. And after a lubing. After a couple of minutes in the dog position, he said "Ow. Could you. Slow down?" Of course I did. "Still. Maybe. Maybe another position. It's very hot in here." Sure. Position change. Position change. Position change. "I need a break." It's been a little over four minutes. "I just. I wanted all night, but. I've only been doing this for a couple of weeks. And I think I like it but. Can I use your shower?" "Uh. Sure." "I'll need a towel." Yes, you will. So, I reach for the closet doorknob. Of course, my hand is covered in lube, so I can't open my closet door to get the towel, nor can I towel off my hand to open the doorknob because the towel is on the wrong side of the door. When I finally manage to get the door opened, I pass him the towel, and he starts to walk naked out of my room. "You should probably put the towel on." I say. "I have roommates." "Are they home?" I don't know. "Possibly. Better to be safe than to freak out my roommates, though." He shrugs, throws the towel over his shoulder and he and his not as well shaped as it was in the pic ass mosey on into the bathroom. While he showers, I put on my clothes, and wash my hands in the kitchen. He comes into the room dressed as well. "Do you want to jerk off?" he asks. Not with you, you lying fucken weirdo. "No thanks." "I live right down the street." He says. "We could do this. A lot." Yea, I really look forward to having a guy come over, let me fuck him for four and a half minutes and then have him use my shower. That's hella sexy. Hold me back. "I'm very discrete." He says, in the gayest voice ever. Gayest. Carson Kressley thinks this guy's voice is annoyingly shrill. And out the door he walks. He won't be coming back. I promised myself not to write about current relationships until there was some sort of wedding announcement. Don't hold your breath, blue people were never a turn on for me (unless you count Brainy Smurf, but I don't).
I'm also taking a break from writing bitter love poems, political rants, and anything involving words. Which is why I've been spending so much time trying to reconnect with my visual artist friends. Really, ever since Celeste moved to LA, my life has been sorely lacking in the hypnotic eyefucking of inanimate objects (unless you count the catotonic guy at The Cantab Semifinals, but I don't). Sora's photography makes me eyesmile, but I am admittedly biased, and have a thing for his most frequent model. But what else to fill the void? Stalk Randy Milholland? No, thanks. Accidentally buy thousands of dollars worth of graphic novels by buying one every time you go to the comic book store, and going to the comic book store several times a week? Uhhhh, yea, that seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so much, anymore, though. I've been going to WANE. A Boston meetup for comic artists and writers. The first few times I went were the kind of special that drools a lot. Each time, there was this big guy, obsessed with Erik Larsen, who he once was elbowed by at a comic con, making them friends forever. He always talks about these fancomics he's working on, and mentioning that the website he plans to post them on gets 600,000 hits, and the other website he plans on posting them on gets 400,000 hits, so he has a million readers. I have thus far managed to stifle the urge to remind him that since he hasn't actually written his comic yet, he technically doesn't have any readers. This is how I plan on getting into Heaven. At the meetup in February, Big Guy mentioned the Chimpeach sticker in the comic book store window, and began ranting "You need to take that out. That sort of thing is devisive. And comic books should be about bringing people together, not driving them apart. If my grandmother was to walk by this store, she'd see that sticker, and walk right by, without stopping in." "Uh," I said, losing my place in the Heaven line, "Does your grandmother ever go into comic book stores?" "No, but she might some day. And, anyway, comics ahould be about nice things, and harmony. Not something that's going to make people angry. It's about escapism." "Sooooo...Art Speigelman's Maus shouldn't exist, then? I mean, theoretically, it might offend Nazis." And, I know, everyone always pull the Nazi card when they're talking about free expression, but what else was I going to say, "Sooooo...the X-Men shouldn't exist because it might offend mutants with magnetic powers who like to wear purple helmets?" And, even then, what made Magneto evil? Being tortured by Nazis. Every argument I had was going to devolve into Nazis anyway, why not cut to the chase? He then babbled about peace, harmony, and masturbating to the Snorks. Actually, he may not have mentioned the Snork thing, I ended up deciding to tune him out. At any rate, I skipped March's meeting, and was not overly optimistic about April's. So I brought Zuzu along, figuring, if nothing else, her interaction with Big Guy would be hilarious. Well, fuck you pessimism, April's meetup was great. Another comic group showed up, and, combined, we had enough people to populate a Marvel Superhero team, and The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Big Guy didn't get a lot of babble time. And I got to schmooze with the cool woman who puts out the Malarkey anthology that Celeste is in, AND paulmay, whose covers for The Weekly Dig are all kinds of awesome. His portfolio also turned my tongue all fanboy, and I now have some new webcomic sites to explore. Anyhow, if your looking for a bunch of cool, frequently updated comics, you should check out act_i_vate, which features an array of web-comix. You should also check out paulmay's website, Delicious Brains Dot Com. Time for me to get back to work on that Torpor Heights comic I wanted to do with Celeste. Where is my "Future Fry Cook"? It's 10:30 in the morning, and I have no one but Augusten Burroughs and a creepy looking woman with a banana peel sticking out of her shoe for company. I have Audioslave's "I Am The Highway" on repeat in my discman. I am about halfway through rereading Running With Scissors, and I'm getting really into it when the bus begins to lurch. My eyes shake. A piece of the hot dog omelet I had for brunch makes a mad dash for the outside world, but after a frightening two seconds seeing the light of day through my trachea, it returns to my stomach. For only the second time in my life, I'm motion sick, and have to put the book down.
The first time I was motion sick, I was sailing from Jacksonville, Florida to Portland, Maine with my dingleberry grandfather and his douchebag son (my uncle, not my Dad). I had a pleasant/smooth sail all the way up to my home on the Cape, but while we were docked in the Cape Cod Canal, I made the unfortunate decision to eat a large bowl of lobster bisque before we set sail in the midst of a really bad storm. That happened when I was twelve. In the intervening sixteen years, I haven't been anywhere close to motion sickness. Before the boating trip, I was only vaguely aware of what motion sickness was. Kevin, the friend who my parents had basically adopted, was motionsick pretty much constantly. Even a brisk walk made him dizzy. When we were thirteen, my parents took us white water rafting in Maine, and during the car trip up there, we had to stop four times to let Kevin puke. And we were bringing him white water rafting. The lurching bus brings me my first thought of Kevin in over a year. I'm thinking of writing down a few memories of him when the bus lurches again. No writing for Safey. I am so focused on not being sick that I miss my bus stop, causing me to spend three minutes longer on the bus, as it lurches through a stoplight. I hate lurching. If Ted Cassidy were still alive, I would cockslap him in the eye. When I finally make it off the bus, I am an octopus on rollerblades, a one legged turtle surfing on an armadillo's back. Luckily, I work near a hospital, so if I do fall and get a concussion, a hot doctor is only a few steps away. I do not fall and get a concussion. Still, my head hurts. All the customers are either whispering or screaming. One manages to do both simultaneously. I am trying to figure out what the Lithuanian woman who speaks no English would like in her coffee, when the phone rings. "Safey? It's Helga. I'm going to be a little late for work. My son is having a baby." There are three things wrong with Helga's statement; "My son is having a baby." One: boys do not have babies. Two: Helga does not have a son. Three: Helga is seventeen, so while it is possible that she could have hidden the fact that she had a son from me, the odds that her son is old enough to reproduce are fairly nil. "What?" "My" *cell phone static* "is having a baby." "Whatever. How late are you going to be?" "Maybe ten minutes." Helga never shows up to close the store. This is the third week in a row I've had to close for someone because another employee just didn't show up. My head hurts. I need to sit down. My son is having a baby, and it is motionsick. If I sit down, I'll fall asleep, so I run to CVS to pick up some Coke. I plan on filling the Coke with our cherry syrup, because the CVS doesn't sell Cherry Coke, but I accidentally add Boysenberry syrup to my Coke. It's not as awful as it sounds. But it's close. The phone rings. I expect it to be Clarissa, as she hasn't called in nearly a day. A new record. It's not Clarissa. "Thank you for calling the MBTA." the phone says. I have not called anyone. The recording has called me. I hang up the phone because I need to sit down, and I don't think I can handle sitting down and talking on the phone at the same time. I have to clean the espresso machine soon, but my son is ringing and his Boysenberry is sick. I wanted to go to the Audioslave show tonight, but Boysenberry didn't show up to cover my shift, and CVS is motionsick. I didn't have tickets anyway. I've been listening to the radio all week to try and win. The last time the WBCN Ticket Load is announced on the radio, I call the station. Instead of Audioslave tickets, they are offering tickets to see Papa Roach. No, thank you. The DJ announces that he has taken the last pair of Audioslave tickets for himself, but to make up for it, he's going to play a half hour of Audioslave music. I decide to crank him. I call up and ask if they still have Nirvana tickets available. He laughs, then hangs up on me. The espresso machine is still giving me its dirty look. Cleaning it will require getting up and moving. Instead, I call my house to check my messages. I don't have any. My voicemail is motionsick. My Boysenberry son is ringing the espresso machine. The MBTA wants tickets to Nirvana. "Are you okay?" An unfamiliar woman on the other side of the counter asks. I lie. "Yes." "What time do you close?" She asks. "Between seven and eight." "Yesterday I came at 7:15 and there was nobody here." She says. "Yes." I say, pulling myself up, using the mini-fridge for leverage. "If it's slow, we close around sevenish. If we're busy it's closer to eight." "But yesterday, at 7:15..." My son is a minifridge with tickets to Nirvana. I grab some Boysenberry for leverage. "I'm sorry." I say. "Can I get you something to drink? Maybe a cookie?" She shakes her head and walks away. I grab a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie for myself, and begin to clean. Once the cookie has successfully voyaged into my stomach, I grab a lemonade from the minifridge, I add four spoons of sugar (it helps the medicine go down), and drink and clean and drink and clean and it's 8:30 and I'm beyond late for getting home for dinner. I grab a slice of pizza on the way to the T. The T lurches. The pizza is made of aluminum and velcro. I need to get off the T. Copley. Sweet sweet Copley station is next. I get off, and wander around Newbury Street. Last time I was on Newbury, Dmitri and I were in the Hello Kitty Store buying lollipops for one of his professors. And for us. Each of us took a Hello Kitty Pop home. I still have mine. When I get home, I'll suck it away until I can suck no more. Goodbye Kitty, you make me motionsick. I grab Dmitri for leverage, but he hasn't been here in nearly a month. Fuck you Boysenberry Street, fucking with my memory. It's not long before I'm in Newbury Comics, wandering around the used CD aisles. Before I moved to Pieceofshitdeserttown, I was a CD collector. I wanted to own every piece of music I loved. I had over 1,000 CDs, and I listened to as many of them as I could, as often as I could. Since I moved back from Pieceofshitdeserttown, I've bought one CD: Modest Mouse's Good News For people Who Love Bad News. Last year, I lent it to Celeste. I haven't seen it since. I'd be bitter, but a year and a half ago, she lent me Kingdom Hearts. She hasn't seen it since. Tonight I need music. I rebuy the Modest Mouse CD, as well as the best of Stone Temple Pilots, and the Velvet Revolver CD. A total of $20. Not too shabby. I count the rest of my money: 1.80. .90 for the bus ride home tonight, .90 for the bus ride to work tomorrow morning. At the bus stop is a woman who smells like the MBTA and Nirvana. I wait behind her for ten minutes, while two fags in hot hats talk about something I can't begin to comprehend. The way they wave their hands make me motionsick. When the bus arrives, I get a transfer, and shut my eyes. I wake up in Central Square, my head is a minifridge filled with Boysenberry sailboats. I want leverage. The wind cockslaps my face. I shake my head and look at the bus schedule. I have 45 minutes before my connection shows up. I open Running with Scissors and begin reading where I left off in the morning. I feel my head clearing. All of my instability is pouring out of my eyes and into the book about Augusten Burroughs' childhood. I didn't have a relationship with a pedophile until I was 19. My parents never left me with their crazy psychiatrist for more than an hour at a time. I'm the one in my family who writes crappy poetry, not my mother. My world comes into focus. Nothing is spinning anymore except the pinwheels that someone has attached to the back of a woman's wheelchair. I am content, and ready for anything. Modest Mouse is singing "The Good Times are Killing Me." A man motions for me to take off my headphones. "Do you know what time our bus comes?" He asks. Our bus? "9:45." I say. "Good. Good." He says, inferring how much he's going to enjoy our special waiting time. "Mind if we talk?" I look closer at him, trying to see if he's a police officer, a family member, someone I've wronged, a hallucination brought on by too much Boysenberry Coke and motionsickness. There are tears in his eyes. "I just need to talk to you about something." He says. That's when I realize, I'm sitting at a bus stop in the middle of Cambridge, and about to have a conversation with God. |
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